By Jennie Griffin
While I read from many different genres, I hold a special place in my heart for historical fiction. I enjoy immersing myself in tales from other times and places that incorporate historical facts and innovative fiction. It is an opportunity to revisit the past through the creative lens of a modern storyteller who can breathe new life into the narratives we find in our history books.
As a young girl, I read and often reread books like Little Women and The Secret Garden, and I became enamored with these times in history. In high school, I discovered the books of Louis L’Amour, and I soaked in the many stories that captured the wild and unpredictable life of living on the American frontier. John Jakes became an absolute favorite as I devoured his family dramas that often-spanned multiple generations. I distinctly remember a period in which I always had a paperback copy of the eight-book series The Kent Family Chronicles shoved into a backpack or purse. Then, in college, my aunt introduced me to Diana Gabaldon. The Outlander series is now a household name due, in part, to the popular TV series. I fell in love with Claire and Jamie and dreamed of wandering the Scottish Highlands. I have recently discovered authors like Olivia Hawker, who wrote One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel. She tells the beautiful yet gut-wrenching story of two families attempting to survive the harsh landscape of Wyoming in the 1870s along with a scandalous secret.
The interesting thing about historical fiction is we know how it ends. We have the advantage of standing on this side of history to look back and say this side won the war or this person achieved this accomplishment. And while this is true, we don’t necessarily know the specific endings to these beautiful stories we are reading. For me, that is the true art of the historical fiction writer…telling a story that is not ruined by the known factual outcome.
And with each book I read, I am reminded that no matter how different our modern society is from its past, there will always be striking similarities in our human behavior and those of our ancestors. The longing to be loved. The fight against evil. The rush to grasp power. The destructiveness of greed. The search for happiness. These are the human emotions that connect one generation to another.
In The Life of Reason by philosopher George Santayana, he wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Writing and reading these stories, as painful and heartbreaking as they might be, helps us remember our past while allowing us to change our future course. With these thoughts in mind, I introduce you to January’s outstanding author, John St. Clair, and his debut novel, Stalin’s Door. John dives deep into Russian history to tell the story of Zhenya, a young girl attempting to survive what feels like impossible circumstances, and a husband and wife that enter her life quite unexpectedly. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!
